


A Pound of Feathers

by abcooper



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8152921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/pseuds/abcooper
Summary: Cat and Kara are trapped together against a ticking clock





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO much spaceshipsarecool for all the editing help, you are a hero <3

Carter scraped his knees constantly throughout his childhood. It wasn't even like he was an especially active child - he wasn't interested in climbing trees or jumping off of things. It was just a general disconnect from his environment as a whole. He’d be toddling along, peering interestedly at some leaf or insect or picture book, and then suddenly he was on the ground, looking startled and a little betrayed. 

Cat wasn't sure why, in the fading light, Kara suddenly reminded her of those moments, except that maybe it was the same wide-eyed surprise on her face that used to inhabit his.

“I'm hurt,” she murmured, sounding confused, and Cat nodded gently, put a soothing hand against her cheek. 

Kara hadn't just scraped her knee.

“You are hurt. But I've called your sister and her thugs, and they're going to come get you. You’ll be alright, Kara - just hold on until they get here?”

Kara smiled. “You said my name,” she pointed out. Then her eyebrows creased. “You don't know my name when I'm dressed like this.”

She was obviously delirious, but Cat experienced a frisson of amusement at the thought that Kara probably wouldn't have done any better keeping the secret even if she  _ hadn't  _ just slammed her head against concrete hard enough to create a mini-crater - along with the rest of her no longer super-powered body.

There was blood in her eyes.

Those same eyes were fluttering shut, and Cat wasn't a doctor, but she knew enough to know that people with head injuries needed to be kept awake. 

“Hey, stay with me,” she insisted gently, and then when that had no effect tried a sharper, “Kiera, where is my latte!?”

Kara’s eyes shot open in an immediate panic at that, which was the intended effect, but then she also tried to sit up. There was a sickening crunch of broken ribs grinding against each other, and then that sound was covered by Kara’s scream.

“Kara!” Cat tried not to panic, keeping her hands gentle as she guided Kara back down so that her head was cushioned in Cat’s lap. She was certainly more awake now, but she seemed more aware of her own pain, breathing shallow and ragged when before she had been on the edge of sleep. 

“... getting blood on your skirt…” she managed to get out after a moment, and Cat barked out a laugh, because that was certainly true.

It wasn't just her skirt though. She was covered head to toe in blood and muck and the dusty rubble that had, only a few short minutes ago, been her beach house. And then it had collapsed under the force of a single prolonged scream from the silver banshee, and if Supergirl hadn't come flying in to save her, she'd have been crushed under the weight of it. 

And then Siobhan had done  _ something _ to drain her powers before knocking the rest of the house down around them. Now Kara lay dying in Cat’s arms, both of them half-buried in wreckage, so that Cat was terrified to try to move, afraid of what might cause the creaking weight above them to come crashing down.

“That's true, you are getting blood on my skirt. So don't you dare die on me, Kara Danvers - it's been  _ decades  _ since I had to arrange my own dry cleaning.”

She'd lied earlier. She didn’t have her cell phone with her, it had been thrown somewhere in the course of the attack. She hadn't been able to call Agent Danvers or the murky black ops organization that Kara apparently felt completely comfortable working for.

Had Kara herself called them, or had she heard Cat’s scream and rushed to her side too quickly to stop and inform anyone else? Had the collapse of Cat’s very private beach house made enough noise to reach her distant neighbors, or had it gone unnoticed? 

There were too many variables, and no way to figure them out. All Cat could do was hold very still, with Kara’s head cradled in her lap, and hope that the person she most depended on in life wouldn't die in her arms.

“I think your pen is out of ink,” Kara had said at her job interview, and held out a new one from the cup on Cat’s desk.

The message was clear - ‘I can meet your every need, before you even realize you need it.’ The eager submissiveness of the young woman, her desperate desire to please - it had simultaneously irritated Cat and raised her protective instincts.

And alright, maybe it had impressed her, just a little. She'd hired Kara, but she never meant to  _ actually  _ depend on her. If anything, she'd expected the girl to require a certain amount of low-level coddling, and god, she certainly hadn't been wrong about that.

But one day Kara showed up after hours and tentatively knocked on her doorframe.

“What are you doing here? I'm not paying you for overtime I didn't ask for,” Cat snapped, and Kara visibly steeled herself to enter.

“I know Miss Grant, I just was in the area and wanted to stop in.” She held out her offering - Cat hadn't even noticed the latte in her hand. “I thought maybe you could use one of these.”

Cat took the latte and didn't bother to disguise her pleasure as she took a long greedy sip. Then she leveled an equally long look at her assistant, whose face morphed rapidly from pleased to wary. Smart girl.

“You know, Kiera, I don't value my minions’ time at all. But up until now, I assumed that you would value your own.”

Kara just shrugged, an awkward little gesture that made Cat roll her eyes. “I like to feel useful,” she said. Something about the way she said it made Cat look a little closer - made her notice the lines drawn across Kara’s face and the stilted set of her mouth.

And she  _ did  _ need help, if she wasn't going to be stuck at CatCo all night. 

“If you  _ really  _ want to make yourself useful, grab that stack of budget sheets,” she instructed, and didn't question Kara’s relieved sigh.

Cat usually sneered at the canned pop-psychology wisdom people liked to pull out as commentary on their petty gossip, but she couldn't deny that it made sense, when Kara admitted -  _ years  _ later - that her parents had died when she was young.

Her personality was so defined by those little cracks. By the desire to be useful, to be liked, to stay hidden but also to be seen. 

Cat saw it everywhere - in the M&Ms that showed up in her office one day, and the way that Advil was always silently delivered within seconds of the first time she rubbed at her forehead. She benefited from it, and eventually, she realized that she was intrigued by it.

Kara hid so well in plain sight. It took Cat two years to realize how much there was to her.

And now Kara’s head was in her lap, and her eyes were again fluttering shut.

“Kara, tell me about Krypton,” she demanded firmly, and Kara widened her eyes to look up at her. 

“Why d’you want to know?” she asked. “Can't publish it. Alex won't let you.”

“I think fair’s fair. You know everything about me, you've even met my mother. I should know something about you.”

Kara hmmmed, and then was silent for a moment. Cat was about to give up on that tactic and try something else to keep her awake, when she began to speak.

“I had a pet when I was little,” she said, and out of the entire history of a dead planet, it figured that that was where Kara would start. “For years and years. My father got it for me the first time my mother had to go on a diplomatic mission for months without us. I called her Pluck, which was basically the Kryptonian word for Spot.” Even around the pain and fear, Kara smiled. Cat wondered if she even fully knew where she was - it was hard to tell whether this was a lucid response or delirious rambling. 

“She died about a year before the rest of Krypton did, you know. I was sad about it, but not  _ that  _ sad - like anyone with a pet. But you know - I suddenly thought of her a few years ago, and I couldn't picture what she looked like. I mean - I have this general idea in my head. I know she was spotty and kind of yellow and small. But imagine if you went 20 years without ever seeing a single image of a cat. Could you still get the shape of the pupils just right, or draw the exact angle that their tails come out of their bodies? We lose details so fast from our brains. They're written in with chalk, and they get washed away if we don't keep tracing back over where they're faded.”

Definitely rambling, Cat decided, and stroked her fingers down Kara’s cheeks, sorry that she had asked. It was a vulnerable topic - she should have saved it for a less vulnerable time.

“I love everyone on earth so much,” Kara continued, her voice slurring just a little. “I love Alex and Eliza and Winn and you. But I'm not sad to die. I've been looking forward to it for a really long time. So don't feel guilty about this, ok?”

“You are  _ not  _ going to die!” Cat could hear the note of hysteria in her own voice. She shoved the panic angrily away from herself - this kind of helplessness and fear were beneath her. “Don't you dare think you can just drop your passive suicidal impulses on me and fade away, Kara Danvers. You are going to survive this, and then we are going to find a therapist who will sign a goddamn NDA because you may be ready to die, but I am  _ not  _ ready to live without you!!”

Kara didn't answer - her eyes closed, with none of the previous fluttering attempts at wakefulness.

“Hey! I mean it - open your eyes! I want to hear more about Krypton. Tell me about your mother. Tell me where you inherited your complete lack of fashion sense.”

Kara’s eyes didn't open again, and they weren't going to. Her body had slumped, the kind of complete bonelessness that had to mean she was too unconscious to feel her broken ribs.

The light had faded away, and Cat couldn't suppress the ragged sob rising from her throat.

“I have things I want to say to you someday,” she told the unconscious woman in her lap, letting the tears run down her cheeks. “It hasn't been the right time to say them yet, but I think we've been getting closer to it, haven't we?”

Kara’s breath began to stutter. And then somewhere to the side, Cat heard the shifting of debris.

“Here!!! We’re over here!!!!” she screamed, and strained her ears for more.

Was it a rescue, or just some piece of plaster falling into a more stable position? She kept listening and went dizzy with hope as she heard the unmistakable crunch of something being  _ moved _ . 

“OVER HERE! Someone is injured!!! She needs help, now!!!!” She was shouting so loudly she could feel her throat tearing, knew she would be hoarse the next day. She kept screaming, even when she realized that Kara had stopped breathing altogether. How much could her body heal, once her powers were restored? It wasn’t the right time to think about that.

Abruptly, something above them shifted, and agents from Kara’s shadow organization came into view. Cat recognized the black man in charge. It was a blur of motion and relief and terror, as they were pulled out of the rubble and Kara was lifted onto a stretcher.

Cat pulled herself together enough for a sharp, “Wait, I’m going with her!” as Kara was lifted into a black van. The door to the van was slammed shut, unheeding of her position as the most powerful person in National City, and a moment later it took off.

“Ms. Grant?” Cat turned, and faced a young woman wearing combat gear and a sympathetic expression. “If you could just come with me, we’d like to get your statement.”

“When will you know whether K-Supergirl is alright?” Cat demanded of her, and the woman’s face softened further.

“I’ll do everything I can to keep you updated,” she promised, and led Cat away from the wreckage. There was still blood on her skirt.

  
When Kara survived, Cat was going to kiss her, she realized. They’d both spent enough time waiting for the things they wanted to say.


End file.
